in Political Cartoons

Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
Abstract
This paper proposes a new criteria to identify Antisemitism in political cartoons by
examining the presence of Antisemitic image-codes within them.
As a viral belief system, Antisemitism has historically used image-based
memophores to spread its constituent memes and to replicate itself in the minds of
potential hosts. The portrayal of the Jew as a powerful demonic enemy of society
serves as an important unifying force needed by mass movements in their quests for
power.
As evident from contemporary cartoons around the globe, use of these memetic
image-codes in political cartoons has expanded beyond the groups known for
transmitting Antisemitic images. A cartoonist infected by these viral image-codes of
Antisemitism will then insert them into his own cartoons.
Dehumanizing codes answer the question of “Who are the Jews?” in such a way as
to deprive Jews of the empathy normally felt for human beings. Dehumanizing
codes depict Jews as being demonic vampires and vermin.
Stereotyping codes address the question of “What are Jews like?” Stereotyping
codes depict Jews as ugly, sinister, controlling the world and the media, as money
hungry and brutal, blood-spilling murderers of everyone from Jesus to Palestinian
babies in Gaza.
After the Holocaust proved the victimhood of the Jewish people, Antisemitism and
the Antisemitic memes of the image-codes needed to evolve into a holocaustresistant form which would deny Jewish victimhood. Moral Inversion Codes invert
the horrors by depict the victims as the perpetrators. Thus the Jew becomes the
Nazi or the terrorist suicide bomber, rather than their victim.
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
CONTENTS
Abstract
Preface
Introduction:
1. The Function of Anti-Semitic Propaganda
2. Image codes and Political cartoons
3. Memetics
4. Memetics and Antisemitism
5. Contemporary Cartoons and Infected Cartoonists
6. Code Origins and Codification
7. Codes from Generation to Generation
8. Code Families
9. The Star and the Codes
10. A Representative Sample
9. Conclusions
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Preface
“For more than forty years I have been putting ideas into people’s heads. It’s what I do.
I’m a political cartoonist. Some of my cartoonist colleagues define the purpose of our
work as showing “the truth”, others as “expressing our opinion” but the fact is that what
we do is to attempt to put our own ideas into other people’s heads …and we use cartoons
to do it.
When a portion of the cartoonist’s readership cries foul about a cartoon, he defends his
work as being a valid political statement. But effective cartoons can go far beyond being
“just” political statements. A cartoon can use the power of graphic signals, which are
embedded with subliminal messages, to transmit deeper, more visceral meanings than
any verbal description of the cartoon might imply.
The intense political focus on Israel and the frustrating search for peace in the Middle
East have become favorite topics for editorial cartoonists. Inevitably, when a portion of
the cartoonist’s readership cries “Antisemitism”, the cartoonist attacks his critics as
“right-wing defenders of Israel” …and defends his work as a valid political statement.
The rich and extensive use of Antisemitic cartoons by the National Socialist Party as part
of their strategies in the prelude to the Holocaust gives today’s debate an added
importance and, perhaps, urgency. It is in light of the extensive use of Antisemitic
cartoons by the Nazis that I undertook, both as a fellow of the Yale Initiative for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism and as a political cartoonist dedicated to freedom
of expression, to address the contemporary controversy and to examine the question of
how to distinguish between valid political commentary and Antisemitism in
contemporary political cartoons.
At the beginning of the study it became apparent that the cartoons which are the most
undeniably Antisemitic can be recognized even if they are in a language which the
observer can not read. The graphic images themselves speak clearly without the words of
the cartoon Many of the same powerfully communicative images appear over and over
again in the work of different cartoonists. They are like a familiar cast of characters. It is
the intent of this paper to explain what the examination of this set of Antisemitic graphic
images has revealed.”
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
Introduction
Anti-Semitic propaganda is a valuable tool for aspiring mass movements and
totalitarian regimes. By proclaiming the existence of a powerful, secretive, demonic
enemy they build a shared hatred as a unifying force for recruitment of adherents.
Totalitarian governments including those of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia,
Revolutionary Iran and radical organizations including Hamas, the PLO,
Hizbullah, White Supremists, and Black Muslims have all defined Jews as a threat
which only they can confront.
These 20th and 21st century purveyors of shared hatred of Jews have all done it with
the aid of Antisemitic political cartoons which use an identical set of graphic images
to convey an assortment of viral beliefs. The power of graphic images to
communicate is enhanced by their use in political cartoons which speak in
metaphors. Their ability to spread virally has now expanded because of the digital
age and their appeal enhanced because of a growingly “post-Literate” society.
These image-codes can be divided into three distinct families. The first two families
were codified in the 20th century and are taken from ancient and medieval libels
along with newly developed 20th century codes. The Dehumanization Codes deny to
Jews the natural empathy felt for fellow humans. Its codes spread the beliefs that
Jews are vermin, blood drinkers, or demons in league with demonic forces. The
Stereotyping Codes portray Jews as rich, ugly, money-grubbing, powerful, and
secretly controlling the Banks, the Media, and the World. Combined, the two
families of codes teach that Jews are rich, ugly, demonic, powerful and enemies of
the social order.
The Holocaust proved the Jews to be victims and powerless. The environment in
much of the west then became hostile to open Antisemitism. From a memetic point
of view Antisemitism can be seen as a virus, which to survive developed a Holocaustresistant strain. The Moral Inversion Codes simply repackage the horror by
inverting it. Jews are portrayed as the perpetrators rather than the victims; Jews as
Nazis. This new and virulent strain is now infecting cartoonists and their cartoons in
pandemic proportions.
This paper describes the identification and examination of Antisemitic image-codes
embedded in contemporary political cartoons.
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
1. The Function of Anti-Semitic Propaganda
During the twentieth century, two major European antidemocratic mass movements
employed the use of Antisemitic propaganda in political cartoons; one to the extreme left,
the other the extreme right (i.e. the Stalinist Soviet State and Hitler’s Nazi movement).
This brings to the forefront their shared motivation for promoting Antisemitism. In order
to gain acceptance and purpose within a population, all mass movements must find a
function and role to play. As Erich Hoffer observed:
“The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then
offer the movement as a cure… mass movements can rise and spread without belief
in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”1
Both Stalin’s Communist party and Hitler’s Nazi movement demonized the Jewish
people. The goal of the propaganda distributed was to build a unifying, shared hatred in
the public’s mind This shared hatred and obsession with eradicating the ‘devil’ amongst
them gave purpose to the Nazi and Communist parties. These mass movements created
the ‘Jewish problem’, a problem to which only they could offer a solution.
“Jews are a valuable hostage given to me by the democracies. Antisemitic
propaganda in all countries is an almost indispensable medium for the extension of
our political campaign. You will see how little time we will need in order to upset
the ideas and the criteria of the whole world, simply and purely by attacking
Judaism”
Adolf Hitler:
The Voice of Destruction: Conversations with Hitler (1940) page 236
Hermann Rauschning
2. Image codes and Political cartoons
Graphic images are a means of human communication that precedes written alphabets by
thousands of years. Prehistoric cave paintings still “speak to us”. We close our eyes at
scary moments in Horror movies to prevent the powerful images from being “burnt into
our memories”. Religions have banned the use of “graven images”. Others eagerly made
use of their communicative power through the use of icons, statues, and idols. In the 20th
century graphic images were widely used to efficiently and effectively infect the masses
with a viral hatred of Jews. In the pre Holocaust pages of Nazi newspapers and in postWWII pages of Soviet humor magazines, cartoons were used to focus the attention of
readers on this common enemy. These cartoons spoke through a specific set of graphic
codes rich in anti-Jewish meaning. However, the fall of Stalinism and Nazism did not
spell the end of these powerful graphic codes. They continued to live, embedded in
1
Erich Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass movements (1951)
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cartoons spread by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Russian Fascists, Neo-Nazis, and
White Supremists. These aspiring mass movements, eager to attract followers, utilized
the spread of Antisemitic beliefs through graphic images to further their grasp on the
public.
Even today, cartoons from openly Antisemitic regimes such as Iran and Syria regularly
make use of a specific set of Antisemitic image-codes. The purpose of the codes is to
define Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish People as a powerful force corrupting and secretly
controlling human society. This in turn, creates the imaginary threat, real to the
population, which only the “movement” can defeat.
The widespread use of these codes has now virally entered the consciousness of political
cartoonists in democratic societies throughout the world, the Antisemitic codes embedded
in cartoons presented as valid political comments. These meme-carrying images are a
graphic vocabulary of the same anti-Jewish libels which were originally codified and
mass distributed by Hitler’s Nazi movement and later employed by Stalinist
Communism.
As evident from cartoons around the globe, use of these image-codes in the metaphors of
political cartoons has expanded beyond the groups known for transmitting Antisemitic
images. The principal of memetics explains the vast and far reaching presence of these
image-codes today.
3. Memetics
A computer virus is a software program. The word “virus” is derived from ‘viral’ because
of a virus’s shared characteristic with all other viral entities; the ability to replicate or
reproduce itself. “Computer viruses” spread copies of themselves from one computer to
millions of other computers. Just as viruses spread, beliefs, ideas, and notions can also
spread, moving from one person to many others. Successful beliefs are replicated as they
proliferate through a population, in effect spreading copies of themselves from one brain
to millions of other brains. Replicating beliefs that spread throughout a human population
have been called “brain viruses” or “memes’. Meme is derived from Greek meaning “to
imitate or mime”.
Memetics provides new insight into the way our minds, societies, and cultures work.
Rather than look at the development of culture as a sequence of ideas and
discoveries that build upon one another, what would it be like to look at culture as a
meme pool, where the ideas in our heads are shaped and transported by various
forces including mind viruses? Are they helping or harming us? Can we control
them? Can our enemies create new ones and infect us with them?
Page 64: Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme (1996) By Richard
Brodie
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Memes spread through a population similarly to a biological virus. Sweeping cultural
changes and spreading belief systems can be understood if they are examined as
epidemics.
Returning to the abstract model of epidemia, it becomes evident that this model can
be applied to phenomena that have nothing to do with disease: the circulation of
objects, money, customs, or the propagation of affects and information. Fashion,
the circulation of violence and even rumors, those contagions passing from mouth
to ear, are all epidemics.
Guillaume, M. (1987) ‘The metamorphoses of epidemia’, in M. Feher and S.
Kwinter (eds.) Zone 1–2: The Contemporary City. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
60.
Although memes are frequently transmitted by “word of mouth”, they can be dispersed
through other mediums as well. There are two general types of memophores (i.e.
conveyors of memes); auditory and image-based. Auditory memophores includes jingles,
sayings, and nicknames whereas image-based examples include idols, icons, paintings,
and cartoons.
4. Memetics and Antisemitism
As a viral belief system, Antisemitism has historically used image-based memophores to
spread its constituent memes. In the past these memophores appeared in woodcuts,
etchings, paintings, murals and stained glass windows. Image-codes taken from these
medieval works can be found, alongside newly created image-codes being used by 20th
century mass movements in cartoons which were mass produced in newspapers and
magazines and presented as valid political commentary.
What was considered mass production in the age of 20th century mass movements is
dwarfed by the potential “viral” distribution afforded by our 21st century digital reality.
The most successful distribution systems of information at present are computer viruses
and spam email. Second to those is the forwarding of content by users to a list of his/her
friends and contacts, commercially exploited as “viral marketing”.
“Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a
marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the
message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of
rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions”
Wilson, R.F. (2000/2005) ‘The six simple principles of viral marketing’, Web
Marketing Today, [http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm]
When a contemporary professional cartoonist draws a cartoon it may first be replicated
on newspaper printing presses. However, on the Internet the cartoon can be distributed
virally, without cost or limit, to millions of viewers. Like a chain letter, an emailed page
of jokes, a Youtube video, or a computer virus it is replicated by being forwarded, rePage 8 of 33
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forwarded, and re-forwarded once again. Each replicated copy carries the same impact
and message of the original. Viral distribution has revolutionized the way information
and memes move throughout the world. What once might have only circulated around a
small city, state or even country now can freely cross international boundaries and leap
across continents.
Image-based memophores are more important than ever. We used to speak of literate and
illiterate but digital society seems to be post-literate. People can read, but reading has
become a chore. Increasingly, the content being virally forwarded is largely photographs,
videos, and cartoons.
(Communication) is moving toward a mixed model of written/audio and visual
communication that focuses, where possible, on visual communication more than
on written text or audio. Users prefer to watch more than to read.
Page42 ECulture: Cultural Content in the Digital Age 2009 By Alfredo M. Ronchi
Visual content is the new medium of choice. Keeping up with modern preferences,
vehicles carrying Antisemitic memes have moved from woodcuts and paintings to being
almost exclusively transmitted through cartoons. Perfectly repackaged for viral
distribution.
5. Contemporary Cartoons and Infected Cartoonists
Most cartoons speak in metaphors. The immense power of the metaphor is its ability to
set the terms and backdrop of the discussion. The graphic codes of incitement created by
20th century mass movements and taken from medieval works of art can increasingly be
found in contemporary 21st century editorial cartoons. They are hidden in plain view,
posing as metaphors and defended as valid political comments. The image-codes,
primarily metaphors, are used in political cartoons which are also largely metaphorical.
Their power to virally transmit is enhanced by use of the metaphor form. A response to
an allegation presented as a metaphor, such as a political cartoon, is framed in terms of
the acceptance or rejection of the metaphorical premise. The viewer is restricted to the
framing of the metaphor regardless of its irrelevance to a proper or wider discussion of
the topic.
Metaphors produce ideological effects because they are selective accounts of
experience. Understanding X in terms of Y emphasizes only some features and
discounts others. It organizes our imagination about X in one way rather than
another. We model X according to the features and relationships between elements
found in Y, although we might have modeled it on a completely different set of
elements and relations
Cultural Software A Theory of Ideology J. N. Balkin Yale University Press (1998)
Page 245
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Viewed memetically, these image-codes transmit Antisemitic memes to the viewer.
These memes attempt to replicate in the brains of viewers, just as a software virus
attempts to replicate in the memory of each new computer it comes into contact with. In
the digital world, people forwarding “infected” cartoons to others can be understood as
people being used as hosts by the meme-bearing codes to spread their message.
Memes “use” people for the purpose of their own propagation. We should not
understand such anthropomorphic language literally: memes no more than genes
have wants, desires, purposes, or interests. Rather, this is merely a shorthand way
of describing how natural selection works on units of cultural transmission.
Cultural Software A Theory of Ideology J. N. Balkin Yale University Press (1998)
Page 61
In contemporary use, Antisemitic memophore image-codes are incorporated into cartoons
both with and without willful intent to “infect” the viewer. Users with intent include
contemporary antidemocratic movements such as the Iranian Islamic Republic, Hamas, al
Qaeda, Hizbullah, and Arab dictatorships. Whereas contemporary cartoonists from
countries such as the United States or Australia, unwittingly produce cartoons containing
image-codes which transmit hidden Antisemitic memes.
A cartoonist infected with these viral meme codes of Antisemitism will use these
memophores in his cartoons (such as the “devourer of children”, “blood-drinking”, or
“money-hungry” memophore). A 21st century cartoonist who is infected may have no
more control over his compulsion to insert infectious Antisemitic image-codes in his
drawings than a person with a cold can control his sneezing out of germs potentially
infecting other human hosts. Such a cartoonist may become a serial creator of Antisemitic
cartoons while sincerely believing that he is creating fair and honest work.
Memes are like symbionts that alter the behavior of their hosts, much as the rabies
virus alters the behavior of a dog by making it more aggressive, increasing its
salivation, and preventing it from swallowing. Just as the genes in the rabies virus
make use of the host to spread their genetic information, memes use their hosts to
spread their own memetic information.
Page 62 Cultural Software A Theory of Ideology J. N. Balkin Yale University Press
(1998)
Any critical study of Antisemitism in contemporary art must include the examination and
the identification of the specific memophoric image-codes used and the meme/beliefs
they transmit.
6. Code Origins and Codification
Medieval Antisemitism was a belief system which incorporated the beliefs that Jews had
sexual contact with pigs, drank the blood of abducted Christian children, were in league
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with the devil, and had horns. Artists of the times used their artwork to depict hateprovoking, blood curdling images of such scenes. These inflammatory depictions were
adapted and organized into a collection of codes by 20th century totalitarian states and
mass movements and used in political cartoons. These image-codes, and the varieties and
variations which they have spawned, can now be found, disguised as metaphors, in
current political cartoons. Each code carries a specific Antisemitic libel.
The original image-codes, as codified by the Nazi movement can be organized into two
broad categorical families based on the nature of the memes they transmit.
One family, dehumanization, houses the codes that spread the dehumanizing memes. For
example, that Jews are vermin, blood drinkers, or demons in league with demonic forces.
The second family, stereotyping, portrays Jews as rich, ugly, money-grubbing, powerful,
and secretly controlling the Banks, the Media, and the World. These memes resonate with
existing Antisemitism in the minds of potential host populations. Combined, the two
families teach that Jews are rich, demonic, powerful and enemies of the social order.
The Holocaust forced the codes to evolve. Images of the extermination of European
Jewry, the horrendous piles of skeleton-thin bodies, photographs of men and women
standing in line, stripped naked, waiting to be shot and thrown into an open pit circulated
around the world. The Jews were unarguably targeted and powerless victims of the Nazi
Holocaust. The environment in much of the west became hostile to open Antisemitism. In
response, like any successful viral entity, the virus of Antisemitism adapted to the new
conditions and evolved a new “Holocaust-Resistant” strain. This new strain is now
infecting cartoonists and their cartoons in pandemic proportions.
The Holocaust-resistant codes do not deny the Nazi Death Camps or the Holocaust. They
simply repackage the horror by “inverting” it. Jews are presented as the perpetrators
rather than the victims. The new codes carry memes including “The Jews are acting like
Nazis”, “The Jews perpetrated a Holocaust”, “The Jews operate an Auschwitz-type death
camp”, “The piles of skeletal victims are not Jewish but rather the victims of Jews”, and
“The Jews are Nazis”. These new and infectious “Holocaust-Resistant” codes are here
after collectively referred to as “Moral Inversion” codes.
The Moral Inversion codes are new, fresh, and rapidly spreading their memes. Moral
Inversion has taken its place along side the two earlier Pre-Holocaust families of codes.
While the Pre-Holocaust codes have become dated and to some extent politically
incorrect, Moral Inversion codes are easily swallowed, readily believed, and increasingly
part of accepted wisdom
The Arab destruction of centuries-old Jewish holy places has given birth to a new strain
of Moral Inversion codes. Parallel to the Holocaust-resistant Moral Inversion codes, these
new memophores carry the inverted belief that it is the Jewish state destroying holy
places and Islamic holy sites victimized.
Diagram 1
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7. Codes from Generation to Generation
The following three figures illustrate the ability of the image codes to survive and remain
potent through the passage of time and to sustain themselves through radical changes in
society. Each of the following figures is a sample of a single Antisemitic image-code as it
remains active, continuing to replicate and infect from an instance of its appearance in:
1. Pre Holocaust Nazi cartoons
2. Post-Holocaust Soviet cartoons
3. Contemporary Work.
The first two examples are of Zoomorphic image codes. The first is the Vulture code and
the second the Spider code. The third example shows instances of the pairing of the
Money Hungry and Hook Nosed codes as they move from Pre-Holocaust Nazi period to
the post-war Soviet era and finally to contemporary work.
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
Figure 1
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Figure 2
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Figure 3
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
8. Code Families
There are three broad families of codes:
1. The Dehumanizing Family
2. The Stereotyping Family
3. The Moral Inversion Family
See Figure 4
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Figure 4
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
1. The Dehumanizing Family of Codes
Dehumanizing codes answer the question of “Who are the Jews?” in such a way as to
deprive Jews of the empathy normally felt for human beings. There are two subfamilies within the Dehumanizing Family of codes: Zoomorphic codes and
Demonization codes. The Zoomorphic codes are metaphorical. They transmit the
belief that Jews are like spiders, snakes, rats, vultures, and other animals which the
viewer already views negatively. The Demonization codes portray Jews as clawed
demons, horned devils, cannibals, baby eaters, devouring mouths, and blood drinkers
and blood sucking vampires.
The images in Figure 5 and Figure 6 transmit the ancient “blood libel” message that
Jews are vampire drinkers of blood. The first (Figure 5) is a photograph of a Polish
wood panel carving from about 1900. It depicts a group of Jews sucking the blood
(through straws) from the child who is their victim. The blood sucking image code is
used again in a contemporary cartoon more than a century later by an Indian artist
(Figure 6).
Figure 5
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Figure 6
2. The Stereotyping Family of Codes
Stereotyping codes address the question of “What are Jews like?” These codes
transmit the belief that there are a set of traits and characteristics that are common to
all Jews. They then define those “Jewish” characteristics and present them in graphic
imagery. Stereotyping codes depict Jews as controlling the world, the media, as
money hungry and brutal, blood-spilling murderers of everyone from Jesus to
Palestinian babies in Gaza.
One of these image codes, the Hook Nose code, carries the meme that Jews can be
identified by their uniquely big noses. Another, the Money Hungry code, carries the
belief that Jews are motivated by their avarice, greed, and simple love of money. In
Figure 7 below, a 2003 cartoon below from the Chicago Tribune, Dick Locher, a
Pulitzer Prize recipient, addresses the question of how to bridge the gulf in Middle
East negotiations. The cartoon features the Jew with a huge beak-like nose being
tempted to follow a trail of dollar bills.
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Figure 7
3. The Moral Inversion Family of Codes
The historic Holocaust and the contemporary targeting of Jews and Jewish
Institutions by terrorist organizations are an impediment to the portrayal of the Jew as
the powerful “devil” referred to earlier as the unifying force needed by mass
movements in their quests for power. Memetically, Antisemitism and the Antisemitic
image-codes needed to evolve into a form which would deny Jewish victimhood.
Moral Inversion Codes depict the victims as the perpetrators. Thus the Jew becomes
the Nazi or the terrorist suicide bomber, rather than their target and victim!
In Figure 8
In a cartoon from Brazil:
Arabs and a Muslim mosque inside of a “Jewish Prison Camp” with the Israeli guards
dressed as Nazis and German writing on the gate.
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Figure 8
”
In Figure 9
The Nazi code in a cartoon from Lebanon
Figure 9
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9. The Star and the Codes
The six-pointed star has been a Middle Eastern, occult, and kabalistic symbol for
centuries but the use of the six-pointed star to represent Jews and Judaism is relatively
new. It has only been since the late 18th century that the “Star of David” began to be used
as a Jewish symbol. Today, the Jewish Star carries a much broader meaning than the
simple identification of a religion or church. It represents Jews, the Jewish People, and
Judaism. But it was only in the 20th century that the Jewish Star became the unique,
universal and ubiquitous symbol representing Jews, the Jewish People, and Judaism.
This, in no small part, is due to the intensive use of the graphic symbol by the Nazis.
“The most prominent symbol of Judaism throughout the Early Middle Ages was the
Torah Shrine. While the Menorah often appeared together with it, the Ten
Commandments on tablets, the hands of the Kohanim giving the priestly blessing
and even the Temple were more significant than the Star of David and the Menorah.
But Clearly at the end of the 19th century with the birth of a new more secular
definition of Judaism and as a Jewish nation emerged, symbols were sought which
would be easily identifiable, did not have excessive
religious connotations
(although some was necessary) and which could hearken back to political/national
settings without a religious emphasis. The Menorah, which had been
a symbol of
the Maccabean revolt (the Maccabees were a favorite of the early Zionists and
nationalists although the symbol was clearly associated with the Temple), was
chosen, and the rather abstract and ignoble “Star of David” whose checkered past
was known to only a few scholars, but whose international and universal themes
had already emerged as significant among late l9th and early 20th century
thinkers.”
(page 286) “Nationalism, Zionism and ethnic mobilization of the Jews in 1900 and
Beyond” by Michael Berkowitz
As a symbol, the “Jewish Star” is agglutinative that is, when “Glued on to” other symbols
it forms a derivative or compound symbol to expresses a single definite meaning. For
example a Jewish Star on a spider or an octopus forms a compound code which transmits
the dehumanizing zoomorphic message that the Jewish People, the Jewish State, Judaism,
and by extension the Jewish shopkeeper down the block are spider-like or octopus-like.
See Figure 10 and Figure 11 below.
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Figure 10
Figure 11
•
Death Star code: In addition to its use in conjunction with other symbols, the
“Jewish Star” appears independently as a specific code. The “Death Star” code
portrays the star (and hence the Jews, the Jewish State, the Jewish People, and
Judaism) as murderous, imprisoning, agent of death, strangling, back stabbing,
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
etc.) See Figure 12 from 1930’s Nazi propaganda and Figure 13 from the 2003
Seattle Times.
Figure 12
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
Figure 13
•
Clusters: In contemporary political cartoons, the codes often appear in clusters,
delivering a set of subliminal messages. See Figure 14 below; a cartoon distributed by
the Arab media (with an explanation of the individual codes clustered within).
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
Figure 14
a. The star is a “glued on” symbol to indicate that the eater is “the Jews” (or the
Jewish State, the Jewish people, or Judaism)
b. The glass of blood is the “Blood Drinkers” libel code.
c. The dead baby on the plate is the “Infanticide” code.
d. The child is about to be eaten. The “Baby Eaters” code.
e. The American Flag fork in the hand of “the Jew” communicates the Jewish
“World Domination” code.
10. A Representative Sample
The meme carrying Antisemitic image-codes have survived and replicated themselves in
cartoons for more than eighty years and through major social changes. It is equally
important to note their viral spread to varied artists of our digital age. Below (Figure 15)
is a representative sample of contemporary instances of the Devouring Mouth imagecode which carries the message that Jews devour everything in their path. The Devouring
Mouth image relays a basic childhood image of a cannibalistic fiend.
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
Figure 15
2008 (Syria)
2008 (Jordan)
2007 (Jordan)
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2009(Jordan)
2006 (Palestinian Authority)
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2007 (Palestinian Authority)
2007 (Palestinian Authority)
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2004 (Palestinian Authority)
2004 (Palestinian Authority)
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
2006 (India)
2009 (USA): A sophisticated cartoon by Pat Oliphant, the most widely syndicated
political cartoonist in the world. Note the use of the “Devouring Mouth” code inside the
“Death Star” code with the Moral Inversion “Jew as Nazi” code coupled with the “Killing
Children in their Mothers’ Arms” code. The entire cluster of codes can be absorbed
subliminally as an image of the flag of Israel, with the two horizontal bars and the star
between them. The wheel at the bottom of the star tricks the eye into not seeing the flag.
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Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded Images” in Political Cartoons
Conclusions
This paper has demonstrated that there are simple, direct, and fair criteria for diagnosing
the presence of Antisemitism in political cartoons. Given the fact that the Internet is a
natural environment for viral communication and the fact of a post-literate public, we can
expect a radical bloom of viral Antisemitism fueled by cartoons. The contagion of
professional cartoonists in western countries by the image-codes and their resultant
replication of the codes in their own work can and should be approached as society
approaches any communicable disease. Basic to the defense against contagion is an
identification of the viral strains and of the conditions and factors involved in the spread
of the disease. Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism Through “Coded
Messages” in Political Cartoons is a beginning.
With thanks to Rachel DeFilipp for assistance in the cartoon research and preparation of
this working paper.
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